The number of severely food insecure people across the Greater Horn of Africa has fallen to 22.4 million due to improvements in Kenya and Somalia. In Kenya, severe food insecurity has reduced, from 2.35 million to some 700,000 people who continue to face crisis conditions (IPC Phase 3). In Somalia, food security has improved due to sustained humanitarian response and average to above average rainfall between April and June. However, 1.6 million people remain severely food insecure. Meanwhile, in South Sudan, conflict continues to worsen the food crisis. At the peak of the lean season (July-August), some 6.1 million people were severely food insecure, including 47,000 people in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) and 1.7 million in Emergency (IPC Phase 4).

Conflict and internal violence displaced tens of thousands of people in Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan in July and August 2018. In Sudan, new internal displacement was recorded in Jebel Marra in Darfur, while in South Sudan, the number of displaced people rose by 70,000 in August to 1.91 million. In Somalia, the number of internally displaced people stands at a record 2.6 million, and the number of forced evictions is on the rise, with over 204,000 people evicted already this year. In Ethiopia the number of IDPs has increased to 2.6 million. Nearly 960,000 people remain displaced in Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone (Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region – SNNPR) and West Guji Zone (Oromia Region) and more than 141,410 people were displaced in the Somalia region after conflict erupted on 4 August.

More than 1,500 new cases of cholera and acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) were registered in the region in July and August, bringing the total number of cases for 2018 to 13,000. In Kenya, the number of newly reported cholera cases has decreased since July, but more than 5,700 cholera cases have been reported to date in 2018, compared to less than 4,100 in the whole of 2017. Other communicable diseases, such as measles (Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda), Rift Valley Fever (Kenya and Uganda), Hepatitis E (South Sudan), Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (Uganda) and Dengue (Ethiopia) also remain present, including in regions bordering neighbouring countries.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

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